we often passed close to their stations. In the early afternoon we saw before us a stone jetty with a spindle on the end, and soon found that this marked the place where the river divides and the delta actually begins, forty-five miles below Galatz. The fork is known as the Chatal d’Ismail, and the embankment was built by the Danube Commission to divert the strength of the current from the Kilia arm into the main stream. Three or four miles to the south the white houses of Toultcha shone brightly among the dark green foliage of the trees, and numerous windmills were waving their arms on the rocky promontory below the town. A half-dozen miles farther to the eastward is the Chatal Saint George, where the stream divides into the Sulina and the Saint George arms. [Illustration: WINDMILLS OF TOULTCHA] CHAPTER XX We did not hesitate to follow the left-hand branch at the Chatal d’Ismail, and, rounding the sharp bend to the north, we soon entered a great wilderness of reeds and willows. For some distance not even a picket station was visible on either shore, but as we paddled steadily along in the sluggish current we occasionally saw a Russian soldier in white uniform in the dense undergrowth among the willows. In a little more than an hour’s time we came in sight of Ismail, picturesquely situated on a gentle slope of ground beyond pleasant meadows, where the ruins of a great Turkish fortress stand. Great cultivated fields on the same side of the river, where scores of peasants were at work, stretched far back to the distant hill-sides, yellow with cornfields and dotted with villages. A large Russian picket station on an open point tempted us to land and see what would happen, so we ran the bows of the canoes into the mud and asked the soldiers assembled on the bank for a light for our cigarettes, at the same time preparing to go ashore. One of them went to the quarters for a live coal, while the others helped us out of the canoes in a very friendly manner, and we spent a sociable hour with them. We did not hurry away, because we planned to camp just above Ismail, and it was nearly sunset when we floated away towards the glittering domes rising above the dense masses of willow-trees in the distance. The peasants rattled across the fields in their farm-wagons, leaving behind them a cloud of dust all golden in the evening light. A mounted officer cantered along the bank, paused a moment to look at us, gave a sharp command to a sentinel, and went on again. Now we noticed that a soldier was stationed at every furlong of the shore, and we began to be anxious about finding a secluded camp-ground. The Roumanian side was absolutely impossible, for the mud was not only of the blackest and most adhesive variety, but it extended so far out into the river that it was quite out of the question to try to effect a landing. We kept to that bank, however, examining every foot of ground at the water’s edge,